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Sunday, April 16, 2017

India should get a little more creative with its Gilgit-Baltistan policy

It could even consider participating in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, subject to Islamabad fulfilling a few conditions.

It would be difficult to fault the official stand taken by the
Government of India on Pakistan’s decision to create a new province of
Gilgit-Baltistan. A Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said last week that the move was “illegal” and “completely unacceptable”.
The
legal position is that India holds the sovereignty over the entire
state of Jammu and Kashmir, though according to the United Nations, it
needs to be ratified by a plebiscite. For a variety of reasons, that
plebiscite has not taken place for 70 years, and despite many twists and
turns, the Jammu and Kashmir issue has not been resolved. However, that
does not negate the fact that as of this moment, sovereignty of all of
the state rests with India.
Pakistan claims legal rights over
Gilgit-Baltistan, formerly the Northern Areas, through an agreement
signed by the so-called Azad Kashmir government that ceded control of
the region to Pakistan in 1949. No one seems to have a copy of this
agreement today. However, Azad Kashmir government never had any control
over the region in the first place, and so handing over that region to
Pakistan was a sleight of hand to disguise Pakistan’s outright
annexation of territory that even now legally belongs to the State of
Jammu and Kashmir.
In 1972, the Azad Kashmir legislature demanded
the return of the region. Its High Court, in a judgement, supported this
contention, but it was overturned by its Supreme Court, which said that
the Northern Areas were not part of Azad Kashmir. Since that court did
not declare it to be part of Pakistan either, it left the region in a
limbo.
The region was ruled since 1949 by the Frontier Crimes
Regulation, which gave no rights to local residents, and all
administrative and judicial powers were held by the Islamabad-based
Ministry of Kashmir Affairs. In 1994, Pakistan passed a peculiar
constitutional device called the Legal Framework Order. This
administrative instrument was used to deny representative government to
local residents and to strengthen Islamabad’s hold over the region. In
1999, the Pakistan Supreme Court directed the Pakistan government to
provide fundamental rights to the region, and to draw up a system that
would enable the people to have an elected government. So in 2009,
President Asif Ali Zardari renamed the region Gilgit-Baltistan through a
Self Governance Order, which kept the reins of the government firmly in
the hands of Islamabad rather than with the region’s chief minister or
elected Assembly.

The way out

Earlier
this month, a Pakistani minister told a television channel that a
high-powered committee had recommended that Gilgit-Baltistan be declared
Pakistan’s fifth province. This move has been criticised not only by
the Government of India, but by the Hurriyat Conference, which advocates the state’s secession from India.
The
failure of India and Pakistan to conduct the plebiscite led to the
exploration of various other ways to resolve the issue. Between 1948 and
1956, the United Nations sought to mediate, but was unsuccessful. In
1953-’54, the two countries held direct talks that were quite positive,
but came apart following the American decision to supply arms to
Pakistan. In 1963, the US and UK strong-armed India to talk to Pakistan,
but the latter, in a style that became typical, over-reached, and the
negotiation collapsed. In 1965 Pakistan tried war, but failed. In 1971,
the two countries put the past behind them and said they would resolve
the dispute through dialogue. In 1989, Pakistan began a covert war that
has more or less been defeated.
So, the only way out remains dialogue and negotiation, which is not happening.As
per the instrument of accession, the Government of India Act (1935),
Indian Independence Act (1947), Constitution of India and international
law, the entire erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir legally
belongs to India. This 2004 map by Central Intelligence Agency (modified
to show the official Indian map inset) shows the ground position of the
areas illegally occupied by Pakistan and China – and that ceded
illegally by Pakistan to China. What the map shows as Azad Kashmir is
what is called Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in India. When
the first war over Jammu and Kashmir broke out, India had to make hard
choices in its military campaign. It focused on the Kashmir Valley, the
region around Poonch and Ladakh. Desultory attempts were made to fight
in the vast Northern Areas but they failed for want of adequate forces.
There
was another subliminal message – if the nation could be partitioned, so
could Jammu and Kashmir, with India holding the Valley of Kashmir and
Jammu, and Pakistan getting Azad Kashmir, which provided depth to the
defence of its heartland, as well as people who were ethnically close to
them. As for the Northern Areas, no one really bothered about it too
much, not the Indians, nor the Pakistanis who are only now seeking to
give it some legal status.
India’s willingness to the partition
option was apparent in its official responses to Sir Owen Dixon’s plans
to partition the state and conduct a plebiscite only in the Valley. They
reappeared in the 1963 negotiations, when New Delhi proposed not just
allowing Pakistan to have Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas, but also a
small chunk of the Valley. Pakistan did not bite.

Lost agreement

In
1972, in the Simla talks, Pakistan’s president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave
a verbal commitment to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that he would
convert the Cease Fire Line into an international border. Pending this,
he agreed that the line should be called the “Line of Control”, which is
a matter-of-fact term, rather than a reference to a line created
through war. But Bhutto was deposed, and the Pakistanis denied that the
conversation happened. No doubt the government has a record of this in
its archives, but we have learnt of this through the memoirs of PN Dhar,
Indira Gandhi’s secretary, and a contemporary news report by the New York Times correspondent James Sterba, who had been briefed by the Pakistani delegation.
Interestingly,
the actual land connectivity between Pakistan and China dates to the
late 1960s and 1970s when the Karakoram Highway linking the two
countries through the Khunjerab Pass came up. India did make a formal
protest, but it was done as a matter of form. If it had been an
important issue it would have figured in the Simla talks. There is
nothing in the available records to show that it did.
That India
was willing to forgo its formal claim over Azad Kashmir and the Northern
Areas was more recently reiterated in the back-channel India-Pakistan
negotiations in the period 2004-’07. India’s opening gambit was Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh’s repeated statements that he would accept any
settlement that would not call for the redrawing of boundaries.
Eventually the two sides came close to a settlement based on existing
borders. Unfortunately, political instability in Pakistan prevented
further movement on an agreement. Subsequently, as is their wont, the
Pakistanis disclaimed any connection to the negotiation.

Shifting goalposts?

And
this is where we come back to the Indian stand on Gilgit-Baltistan
today. India cannot formally take any other stand but to insist on its
claim of sovereignty. But there has been an Indian position on Jammu and
Kashmir, which essentially wishes to settle the dispute with Pakistan
on an “as is, where is” position. By shifting the goalposts now, the
Modi government is embarking on an entirely new track.
Many
questions arise: Does India assert its sovereignty over Gilgit-Baltistan
and Azad Kashmir with a view of reclaiming them, or is the claim a
basis of negotiation? Second, is reclaiming a realistic option,
considering that the bulk of the people there would be against the move,
never mind the few dissidents who are trotted out in seminars? Third,
is this a desireable option? Would India like to add seven million
mostly Muslim citizens to Jammu and Kashmir whose population today is 13
million of whom nine million are Muslim and four million are Hindu?
Actually
it is more than likely that New Delhi’s main purpose is to use the
sovereignty issue to oppose the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on the
pretext that it passes through Gilgit-Baltistan. Essentially what India
is saying to China is: Either accept India’s sovereignty on Jammu and
Kashmir or abandon the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Neither is likely to happen.
On March 17 the Chinese official spokesperson noted:
“On the Kashmir issue, China’s position is consistent and clear-cut. As
a leftover issue from history between India and Pakistan, it needs to
be properly settled through dialogue and consultation between the two
sides. The development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor does not
affect China’s position on the Kashmir issue.”
In opposing the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, New Delhi needs to clarify its goals.
Is it doing so with a view to disrupt the Sino-Pakistan axis? That is a
legitimate goal, but whether it is desireable or even achieveable is
another matter. A more constructive policy could well be a participation
in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor subject to Islamabad ending its
blockade of India’s land and rail routes to and through Pakistan, and
opening up its economy to South Asian regional integration, something
which Islamabad has committed itself to in various meetings of the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. A more integrated South
Asia will be beneficial to all parties and if it is done via a Chinese
agency, it will be all the more satisfying.Scroll.in March 20, 2017